Fritz Leiber: The Sinful Ones

He rubbed the back of his neck and pulled his chair a little closer.

“And then all of a sudden, when I was reading one of the science books, it come to me. The answer was all there, printed out plain to see, only nobody could see it. It was just this: Nobody was really alive. Back of other people’s foreheads there wasn’t any real thoughts…just nerves, just wheels. You didn’t need thoughts or minds, or love or fear, to explain things. The whole universe—stars and man and dirt and worms and atoms, the whole shooting match—was just one big engine.”

He finished his drink.

Carr turned his head a little so that he could see the bargeman more clearly. It almost soothed him to hear the horrors of the last few days spoken out so casually.

“So there it was all laid out for me,” the bargeman continued. “That was why there was no honest-to-God response in people. They were just machines. The fighters was just machines made for fighting. The people that watched them was just machines for stamping and screaming and swearing. A woman was just a loving machine, all nicely adjusted to give you a good time…but the farthest start was nearer to you than the mind behind that mouth you kissed.

“D’ja get what I mean? People just machines, set to do a certain job and then die. If you kept on being the machine you were supposed to be, well and good. Then your actions fitted with other people’s. But if you didn’t, if you started doing something else, then the others didn’t respond. They just went on doing what was called for. It wouldn’t matter what you did, they’d just go on making the motions they were set to make. They might be set to make love, and you might decide you wanted to fight. Then they’d go on making love while you fought them. Or it might happen the other way. Somebody might be talking about Edison. And you’d happen to say something about Ingersoll. But he’d just go on talking about Edison. You were all alone!”

He slewed around in his chair and poured himself another whisky.

“All alone. Except for a few others—not more than one in a hundred thousand, I guess—who wake up and figure things out. But they go crazy and run themselves to death, or else turn mean. Mostly they turn mean. They get a cheap little kick out of pushing things around that can’t push back. All over the world you’ll find them—little gangs of three or four, half a dozen—who’ve waked up, just to get their cheap kicks. Maybe it’s a couple of coppers in Frisco, a schoolteacher in K.C., some artists in New York, some rich kids in Florida, some undertakers in London—who’ve found out that all the people walking around are just dead folks and to be treated no decenter. Maybe it’s a couple of guards over at one of those death-camps they had in Europe, who see how bad things are and get their fun out of making it a little worse. Just a little. A mean little. They don’t dare to really destroy in a big way, because they know they machine feeds them and tends them, and because they’re always scared they’ll be noticed by gangs like themselves and wiped out; It’s fear drives them, always fear. They haven’t the guts to really wreck the whole shebang, but they get a kick out of scribbling their dirty pictures on it, out of meddling and messing with it. I’ve seen some of their fun, as they call it, sometimes hidden away, sometimes in the open streets. It’s lousy and rotten.

“You’ve seen a clerk dressing a figure in a store window, fiddling around with it? Well, suppose he slapped its face. Suppose a kid struck pins in a toy pussy-cat, or threw pepper in the eyes of a doll. Like that. Lousy and rotten. No decent live man would have anything to do with it. He’d either go back to his place in the machine and act out the part set for him, or else he’s hide away like me and live as quiet as he could, not stirring things up.”

He looked at Carr from under his arched and ragged brows. “What are you going to do? You’re young. Why don’t you go back to your place in the machine and sweat it out that way?”

Carr tried to lift himself up a little. The room rocked and blurred. “I can’t,” he heard himself whispering, “because the ones after me know my place. And there’s a girl. They know her place too…if they haven’t found her already.”

The bargeman leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Who are they?” he asked. “What gang? What do they look like?”

Carr heard himself describing Miss Hackman, Mr. Wilson, and Driscoll Aimes. When he was part way through, the bargeman interrupted him.

“I know them. A mean lot. I’ve seen that bitchy black cat of theirs.”

He slopped the rest of the whisky into his tumbler, drank, then sat working his big-knuckled hands. Finally he heaved himself up. The tumbler rolled across the floor. He lurched to the door, slid it open wide. The darkness and the noises of the city flowed in. He looked around.

“You go back,” he mumbled at Carr. “You and your girl go on back. Don’t worry about anything. Leave it to me, leave it to Old Jules. I got connections.” He flapped his big hand at Car. “You go back.” Then he stumbled through the door and slid it to behind him.

Carr sat up, biting his lips against the sudden rush of dizziness. He got his legs over the edge of the bunk and sat there, the cool air drifting along his skin, the walls of the cabin advancing and retreating and every now and then erupting in a coruscation of bright sparks.

After a while he stood up, holing on to the edge of the bunk. As soon as his eyes quieted down he made his way across the cabin, remembering to stoop, until his fingers reached his clothes where they were hanging, stiff from the water. He dressed slowly and clumsily like a child. His trousers were stuck together and he had to run his hands down the legs.

He heard the distant hooting of a ship on the lake. He finished dressing and stood smoothing out his clothes. Then he made his way to the door, with difficulty slid it open, and stepped out onto the narrow deck.

The late night-sounds of Chicago enfolded him—the lonesome purr of traffic, the jangling of a bell, the rattle of an elevated train crossing the Well Street bridge, the rumble of unidentified machinery. Across the river, Carr saw three or four sets of headlights probing their way along the two levels of Wacker Drive, a red warning light on the embankment, a few patches of lighted window in the towering buildings, and their reflections wriggling like quicksilver on the black water.

Carr realized that the barge was moored to the embankment. Only he was standing on the side of the barge away from it. With groggy care he made his way around the deck, by the stern, found the embankment, peered over the rail, saw hardly a foot of water between him and the stone. He waited a moment, got his legs over the rail, steadied himself.

Just then a great red glow flamed up behind him, turning the nearer bricks of the embankment bright almost as day. Clutching the rail spasmodically, pressing his legs against it to steady himself, Carr turned his head. He saw the bargeman standing at the prow with a railroad flare sizzling in his hand. Against the black river, the lower half of his huge body cut off by the low cabin, his back in the shadow, his lumpy muscles and great face and tangled hair reflecting the blinding red light, he looked like some torchbearer in the inferno, some signalman on the Styx. He saw Carr. Seven times he whirled the torch in a circle, then seven times more, then he sent it whirling high in the air.

“Signals,” he muttered enigmatically across the cabin. “Trust Old Jules.”

The flare shot down like a small meteor, hissed out in the river.

“Listen!” Carr heard the bargeman call. He could hardly see him for the moment, the darkness swam so after the flare, or else his dizziness had come back. “Listen! D’ya hear it?” the bargeman repeated in a hushed and drunken voice. Carr strained his ears but was aware of nothing but the machine-sounds of Chicago. “There it is,” the bargeman called, “Clankety-clank…clankety-clank…That’s the real sound of the universe. That’s the music of the spheres. That’s your heavenly choir. Not very sweet is it?” He paused. Then turning toward the city, he shook his fist. “But you wait,” he roared, “you wait! Your time’s coming. There’s a new power running the big engine. A power that can melt cities like a blowtorch melts steel. We’ll see if the big engine can stand up under that, and people still all asleep. We’ll see! We’ll see! We’ll see!”